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American Power in the '90s:
A Large Sword With Two Edges

By

Gerald F. Seib

Updated June 9, 1999 2:09 a.m. ET

WHY IS IT SO HARD to bring the Kosovo crisis to a neat conclusion? The temptation is to wring one's hands and conclude that, if only the U.S. were more powerful, it could make things fall into place more easily.

Yet that analysis misses an important reality. A principal problem complicating the Kosovo endgame isn't so much that the U.S. is weak, but rather that many perceive is as too dominant a force in the world of the 1990s. The...